Elections 2009 – Some Predictions

May 9, 2009

In the days leading to the election results, the breed of political pundits seem to suddenly proliferate and multiply and theories abound! That combined with the media political analysts (I use the term analyst very very loosely!) is enough to confuse all of us who have a real stake in these election results.

But for all of you who have accompanied me on this election journey, I am putting down some predictions; these aren’t based on any real analysis, but more a collection of predictions from amongst those political analysts, commentators and observers who are credible (small rapidly diminishing breed!) and a small dose of my intuition and analysis.

Here they are:

1. No Party or Coalition will get a majority in Parliament.

2. UPA (the present Cong. led) Government will not get a majority.

3. UPA will decline in numbers and NDA will increase its numbers vis a vis 2004.

4. UPA constituents like RJD (Lalu Yadav), Samajwadi Party (Mulayam Yadav), DMK (Karunanidhi) are all expected to lose seats and decline significantly from their 2004 position in Parliament.

5. Left (another UPA supporter) is going to lose significantly vis-a-vis their 2004 position as well.

6. The performances of the two National parties BJP and Congress are currently unclear. Consensus currently is that BJP will improve its 2004 position and Congress fate will be decided with its performance in key states like Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

7. There will be winners and losers in this election. Winners will significantly improve their position and losers will significantly decline - The winners in this election will be JD (U) (Nitish Kumar), AIADMK (Jayalalitha), TDP (Naidu), PRP (Chiranjeevi) – The Big losers will be RJD, SP, DMK and the Left.

8. The political dynamics of Uttar Pradesh will be rewritten – where for the first time after many many years, the hold of the SP and BSP will be broken and the two National parties BJP and INC may win the majority of the seats in UP!

9. The fate of YSR (Y Rajshekar Reddy) CM Andhra Pradesh and Naveen Patnaik , CM Orissa will be decided during these elections. Congress will lose the state elections in Andhra Pradesh and Chiranjeevi will play an important role in government formation in AP.

10. BJD (Naveen Patnaik) may not win a majority in Orissa and may be faced with needing support from either Congress or BJP to form a government. The situation here will decide the BJDs position vis-a-vis supporting UPA or NDA in the center.

11. Since the wheeling and dealing will depend a lot on which party is invited to form the government by the President, we can expect considerable to-ing and fro-ing and use/mis-use of Presidential discretion on whether the Single largest Party should be invited to form a government or the largest pre-poll Alliance! (This assumes that the two will be different political formations!)

12. So who will be Prime Minister? That question has many possible answers currently…stay tuned and good luck to all of us!